That’s if you have money to take a chance, though. Does that really apply to Capcom in this instance? Maybe it’s because of their own bad business choices, but I would wager in light of this news that they probably haven’t had “fuck-around-and-see-what-happens” money for years. That could be why a lot of things we’ve seen from them over the past few years have been trying to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. Fighting games with comeback mechanics. Gears of War: Resident Evil Edition. Lesbian Dante.
Honestly I dont know how people can really defend capcom or blame fans. They have spent the last 3 years putting out average games with overblown budgets or just bad games in general. Why would 3rd person action games like Remember me or Asura wrath sell when there are so many better alternatives? The last 3 or so years is finally catching up to them people voting with their wallets. Plus they have lost a lot of veteran talent look at Square the creator of FF left after FFXII and since he left FF games have been kinda rocky quality wise.
Im not directing this at anyone in particular but i skimmed a bit and seemed like people were trying to rationalize SFxTekken lol just dont its literally the worse DLC situation ive ever seen in gaming and on top of that the games sucked so that just generated even more hate and no sympathy.
They should just take the Konami route where they only put out 1 non niche genre game (popular genres like action, action/adventure, FPS) every 1-1 1/2 years or so on main consoles.
Let’s be honest about Tekken though, they’ve been practically LIVING off the same models since Tekken 5 (which was like 04 or 05). They just make a few new characters, change up the backgrounds, add some new moves, do rebalancing, and that’s that (yes they’ve upped the LOD overtime, but the models have been practically identical since T5). Yes Capcom has and continues to do the same thing with SF4, but looking at the mythical SFxT, the majority of the cast were brand new, I’d wager that Capcom could have released it at full price with OUT the SF characters - and be justified with a $60 retail. MvC3 was friggin like 30 something characters with ALL new models - only a handful had been done anything close to that (Zero/Ryu/Chun). There is something to be said for the development cost of a game as well as the overhead of a company and a game which grow exponentially relative to the size of it.
Game cost have gone up. Period. No question. Things such as ‘community relations’…you do know those people who show up at things such as EVO are getting paid BY Capcom…the money for their paychecks, for their flights, for their hotels, comes directly from the game sales themselves (it gets filtered thru the corporate structure, but ultimately the cost codes they charge their time to are going to go back against those fighting games. You mention games like DOA…do you see them anywhere? Do they really have any level of market presence? Are they actually doing fine? Existence does not define “Doing fine/well”.
The thing about it though…I’m honest about it, I was ‘smedium average’ in SC & BW. I cared more about UT99 and Marvel. I was good enough to know how high the mountaintop was, but not vested enough to go to the gym and rock climb for practice. So it’s easy for me to look at that series (and I was similar in C&C) and understand where the glut of what separates the scrubs, from the goods, from the greats. It’s just a different monster entirely. I TAUGHT people how to play those games. And I stick to what I was saying, when it comes to…
“Hey I have a friend who wants something to do this weekend, heard we were playing that Wings of Liberty and was hoping we could show him the ropes”
You can sit down with him, do one match combined against the CPU, to show him all the units and how the basic controls and grouping work, do a second match to show him a proper build order, and after that? for the rest of the night he’ll be able to play with you guys. No he’ll never win, yes he’ll be first out - but it will be purely experience based. There will be NOTHING he can’t do, his failure will be because his competition has logged more time, know some more nuances, know the map better, are better at multi-tasking in that game, etc. But that friend can do ‘everything’.
Back in 02 I tried to teach my sister MvC2 - she was like 10. I got excited when she threw her first fireball. Of course she could never do it again - well consistently. Of course if we ever played against each other, I’d body her with my Servbot/Roll/Cyclops team with, damage maxed out (poor Servbot took damage like Jean). I won because of experience. But also because no matter how much she could think about meta-game stuff, she couldn’t perform ‘even basic attacks’.
That’s what I’m pointing to on that topic - fighting games are only accessible to those who have done some level of execution practice for them previously - I can look at AceturnedJoker - he doesn’t play FGs anymore, but I can pop in USF4 when it comes out, and he can pick up Akuma and throw fireballs. If I sit my wife down, she can’t even do that though. If I put an RTS down in front of them, say WW3 - neither have played it (to my knowledge), their speed at picking it up will be pretty damn close - even though Ace played SC & BW and CC back in the day (along with a few others I can’t remember…something about One Man Army and robots shrug) - what the game will come down to are knowledge based and experience based - not execution.
It’s not just about units sold, its about what your actual return is. Peopl got FIRED for Tomb Raider not doing well enough even though it blew off the shelves. These shits cost ‘movie budgets’ now.
Cost to make…
Theoretical amount of money it can make…
Onimusha will NEVER be a ‘high’ seller. It’s a ‘niche’ title. Lost Planet though - in this FPS day and age? All it takes is the perfect storm for it to get them Halo numbers. So it’s a better risk.
Tekken Revolution? the one that just dropped? Even if that one is from scratch (I haven’t checked it), they still went from 2004ish with Tekken 5 - all the way to 2012 with TTT2 using pretty much the same Kazuya, the same Brian, the same Jin, same Paul, same Law, same Nina, etc. People didn’t complain, and I’m not complaining - but they were catching up to the duration of those reused Morrigan sprites I’m just sayin’.
And there isn’t an issue with that - none, but it means they are saving money in the development process, and that’s on TOP of their frequent ‘MK Ninja Clones’ syndrome which enables them to grow, check, and balance characters quickly and easily. So while their DLC may not be like Capcom, their cost aren’t like Capcom.
And I’m re-iterating - I’m not saying anything negative about Namco’s approach, just that their difference in approach lowers their cost, meaning the ‘need’ for DLC is less. Is Capcom bullish on DLC - a bit, it can be done better - no argument, but its not unjustifiable. I look at USF4 - thinking of it primarily as DLC conceptually. It actually won’t cost capcom a bunch of money to make as they are transfering over models - only making one new character, and doing tweaks that have been recommended by an informed user base. But to recoup their cost is going to be a bit steep as they have a smaller pot of people (compared to the launch of Vanilla and even Super) who will buy it, and they know it. So ytheir asking price is steep IMO, but its justifiable to make business sense.
I don’t think it would have made much of a difference. Capcom has stated that the overall sales trend of these online rereleases has been downward, each one sold less than the last. Which means that the MvC1 and Marvel Super Heroes bundle sold less than Jojo, despite the former being much a much more successful and well-known IP.
Also, I think Darkstalkers was more successful than most people are giving it credit for. It’s just that most of its success was in Japanese arcades. I’ve even heard that for a short while it might have had more people playing it than Street Fighter over there (granted this was during the gap between Super Turbo and Alpha 1, when most casuals would have been growing tired of all the Street Fighter 2 updates).
Even if you use the same base design, that doesn’t mean it’s the same model. VJ may be based off his design in TvC but that doesn’t mean the model was ported or anything, they still had to completely redo it. The only difference between capcom and namco is namco keeps the base artstyle consistent from game to game.
And in regards to sfxt, it’s no well kept secret that they reused sf4 models for some characters, along with other assets, even including the font of the letters.
And you’re still missing the point entirely. Namco doesn’t just ‘toss’ old models. they increase the LOD on the old ones as well as articulation (from T5 to TTT2). And there is nothing wrong with it either, but all the things Namco does - SAVE MONEY. Think of it this way. If Namco did TTT2 with the same size cast - with all new models, with all new styles and articulation, new fighting moves, etc…do you really think it would have retailed for $60 with no real DLC? In itself the original and the new TTT were less about concept- and more a ‘money grab’…nothing wrong with it - I loved the first one and never had the time to fall in love wiht hte second one, but it seemed good on the surface. But folks act like Capcom does stuff that no one else does or is some evil that should be locked away. For comparison’s sake - how many obviously ‘new model’ characters were there in TTT2? Now look at SFxT - how many new models were there? Think of how much money was funneled into essentially make all the Namco characters from scratch? It’s not like they ‘do’ play like their Tekken selves - they are complete re-interpretations. They could cut out every SF4 ‘copy’ and they would still have a $60 game.
If you want to see a company make a large roster and cram it into a 60 dollar package - look at MvC3, the characters aren’t as detailed visually, nor is their moveset as detailed. Balance is handled via the ‘team element’ and sweeping engine changes like X-factor. MvC3 was fairly priced. Now Shuma/Jill was a misstep - they weren’t wrong for making them DLC - they were wrong for hte value charged.
But shit look at the Guilty Gear series…same sprites over the years to keep cost low. Same goes with the other Arksys games.
The only game I can think of to break that conceptually is MK9 which packed tons and tons of character and content into its price…granted that same company is now milking the FUCK out of DLC with Injustice.
Let’s cut the crap, people are just expecting shit for free, most have no understanding of how business work, how program management works, etc. Capcom is not evil. They over-priced the Shuma/Jill DLC, the on-disc DLC is fine, and the gems for SFxT were overpriced, but that got fixed if I recall. They are no worse and no better than any other company.
Does anybody else feel that half of this thread is turning into arguing just for the sake of it, now?
Though for the record, all of the sprites for BBCP were re-drawn, with them using different animation studios for the cut-scenes and that between games. Just to clear that up.